


The Company I'm Keeping

by LostSoftSpaceDyke



Series: 666/Super Sappy Lines Prompt Challenge [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 666 Challenge, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), M/M, Pining, Pining Crowley (Good Omens), hardcore pining, historical-ish, i guess this is fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-23 17:37:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20344057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostSoftSpaceDyke/pseuds/LostSoftSpaceDyke
Summary: 1985. Les Mis has opened its doors for the first time in London and Crowley was not prepared for Aziraphale's post-musical rant about the character of Eponine during the walk home.Sort of part of the 666 challenge (write a fic in 666 words), but using a prompt from tiptoe39's prompt list on Tumblr.





	1. Chapter 1

This isn’t how Crowley had really planned for the night to go. 

Aziraphale had always been sentimental about his books and he’d really adored this one, for some reason. Crowley never quite understood it. The angel was the absolute inverse of every major character he adored in Les Miserables, indulgent and petty to a fault. Here was a being who nearly got discorporeated in the very same revolution for wanting  _ crepes,  _ of all things, waxing poetic over les amis as if he could have been one of them. It frustrates Crowley to no end. 

But Aziraphale had been miserable these past few weeks and Crowley really couldn’t stand to hear him whine any longer. So Crowley bought the tickets despite knowing very little of the plot or of how musicals worked in general. If it took him sitting through multiple hours of melodramatic singing to fix Aziraphale’s sour mood, then so be it.

Maybe if he’d read the book he would have been better prepared for the utterly  _ unfair  _ conversation Aziraphale was insisting on having on the walk back home.

“Miss Ruffelle portrays the heartbreak so well. It felt just as real as it did every time I read it,” Aziraphale sighed as they walked along the dark London streets. The starlight of a million London windows filters in through the leaves of the trees in St James’ Park, reflecting on wet cobblestones and in the angel’s still watery eyes. Crowley bites his tongue.  _ I think of him and then I’m happy with the company I’m keeping.  _

“Despite the whole novel being a tragedy, Eponine’s story contains no mercies. To risk everything for a man who will never know how much he meant to you,” he continues, and the angel looks as if he’s on the verge of tears again for what feels like the third time that night while Crowley is about one misplaced word away from snapping.

“That’s life sometimes, angel,” Crowley grits out. “Don’t always get what you want.”

“But what Victor Hugo did to her character was cruel, Crowley, you must admit. To have her want something so dearly that she can’t have. I had told him as much while he was writing it, but he never was the sort to take advice. Too hard headed for his own good, and too blind to see what he’d truly done to Eponine,” Aziraphale says with a sigh before looking wistfully down at his feet. “Thank you for taking me to see it, dear. I needed the break.”

The angel smiles at that, looking back up to meet Crowley’s gaze, and its so filled with fondness that Crowley wonders… 

_ Though I know it’s only in my mind.  _

“It just...reading the book and, now, seeing it performed always makes me wonder if this is how humans are every day. Walking around without knowing how much they are loved.”

_ And although I know that he is blind, still I say, there’s a way for us.  _

“You’re being a sap.” It comes out a touch more accusatory than Crowley had intended it to. He’s bitter and itching to do so many things that he knows he’ll regret. “Really don’t think Hugo put that much thought into it. He just wrote a love triangle like everyone else does. Besides, people are stupid. Love could hit them with a bulldozer and they wouldn’t know.”

“How could one be surrounded by a love so strong and have not the faintest idea of its presence or source?” Aziraphale asks. The tone is incredulous, beginning for an answer as if Crowley had not prayed for one for centuries. “How could Marius not have known?”

“Somehow you managed it.”

Wait.  _ Shit. _

Aziraphale looks up suddenly, eyes a little wide and oh God Crowley really has done it, hasn’t he? 

“What do you mean?” 

He can’t hide it anymore. The light of a thousand city stars reflects off the pond. Crowley doesn’t miss the irony of the moment.

“I’m in love with you.”  
  



	2. If He'd Ask It

For a moment Crowley wonders if he’s accidentally stopped time. The background chorus of honking cars and drunk teenagers continues, but in the middle of the park stand an angel and a demon, frozen. They stare at each other as if waiting for the other to break the silence but to do so would require that either one acknowledges the words still hanging between them.

Crowley, despite the anxiety in his chest and the sinking of his gut, can’t bring himself to regret what he’s done. His angel stands in the park, mere inches away, hair like a halo under the lamplight and oh how this reminds Crowley of when he first fell in love. He still does not understand how a single bumbling angel could walk into his life and take his breath away when even the creation of the  _ stars themselves _ had not. Standing at the eastern gate of Eden, he had watched as the most beautiful being he’d ever seen fumbled through an explanation of the greatest act of mercy he’d had ever heard and oh how he’d wanted to run his fingers through sunlit curls as he kissed the principality senseless. He still does and, were he not just as frozen as Aziraphale was now, he would have done so. He has loved him for six thousand years and he will love him for six million more if given the chance. Now that he’s said it, he has nothing left to lose.

_ How strange, this feeling that my life’s begun at last. _

“Crowley, I…”

Anything he had left to lose has now been lost with just five words. A friendship cultivated over millennia may just have ended as a consequence of his impulsivity. He could have kept quiet. He could have let Aziraphale go on in his rant, let him lament a feeling he had never known himself through a character whose pain he would never truly understand. 

_ Does he see what I see? Does he feel what I feel? _

“How could I not have known?” Aziraphale finally says as he looks down at his hands, fingers knotting together in his nervousness. Aziraphale is refocusing the conversation, shifting it away from the words neither of them had dared touch and Crowley’s heart sinks because he  _ knows _ where this is going and he hates it, hates the understanding that this night will end with him alone drinking wine on his kitchen floor in the hopes of forgetting what the stars he created look like in someone else’s eyes. 

_ My life seems to stop as if something is over and something has scarcely begun. _

“And now that you say it, it seems so obvious,” Aziraphale sighs and the tone is bittersweet but Crowley has, in six thousand years, grown to understand that he should not hope for things he cannot have. This does not mean that he has learned. When regarding Aziraphale, Crowley has never learned and never will. “How could we have been so blind, my dear?” 

Aziraphale’s hand brushes so lightly against Crowley’s cheek that the touch feels like a ghost. Crowley, for the first time, allows himself to hope. He allows himself to drown in his stars reflected by pale blue eyes. “I’ve spent centuries thinking that the love I was sensing was only my own. But it’s been your love as well, hasn’t it? It’s always been you.”

_ If he’d ask it, I’d be his. _

The demon doesn’t respond but the pained little smile on his lips answers the angel’s question just as well. He aches for whatever it is the angel is teasing at. He aches for the permission to card his fingers through Aziraphale’s halo of hair, to brush his lips against his own until the world stops for them once more. When Aziraphale steps closer, Crowley feels as if his heart might burst. 

_ For it isn’t a dream.  _

But it melts instead with the slightest press of lips and the sweetest brush of fingers along his temple.   
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A continuation of The Company I'm Keeping due to popular demand on Tumblr. Using the prompt line "it's always been you" (#3). It has a happy ending, I promise! 
> 
> If you liked it, please remember to leave kudos and comments! I love hearing feedback <3 Also, it's on Tumblr so you can reblog and like it as you wish ;) https://tiredandineffable.tumblr.com/post/187200030371/if-hed-ask-it

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt #1: "I'm in love with you."
> 
> The rest of the prompts are on Tumblr (https://tiredandineffable.tumblr.com/post/187120064241/super-sappy-lines-prompt-list)! Feel free to place a request for the next one. If no requests come in, I'll do them in order. I intend to do one per day until I've finished the list. 
> 
> I know the 666 challenge has actual prompts for it, but I liked the idea of writing something so short but wanted to do the challenges more frequently than they were outlining. Who knows, I might overlap with the challenges they outline in the future!


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